The Owlman
by Cookie Master's Apprentice
Summary: Subject 152C-F4 had spent eleven years in a dog crate. Now, set free by a band of mutants, he no longer had to worry about experiments. He just had to learn to fly and survive in the real world, a place he had no idea about, with Erasers hot on his heels.
1. Prologue

Hello. I'm new in the Maximum Ride fandom, and this is my first story here, as you can guess. I know it might not be good. Just read and give me ideas, alright? Constructive critisms always accepted, and so are flames. I'll try my best to stay away from GaryStu stuff, but give me an alert when my character started to become one. It's hard not to turn your character into a Mr. or Mrs. Perfect.

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**Prologue**

Pain. Red. The color of blood. The liquid that came from opened holes on a body.

Never show weakness. Never attract attention. Never fight back. Never scream. Never show pain. Never beg for mercy. Such is the rule in this place, this hell.

Subject 152C-F4 was curled up in his crate, his knees drawn to his chest, his overlong graying hair streaming down his stained shirt and cotton pants. His dull grey eyes lifted up when the door clicked open. Another one is about to be gone, he thought, but stiffened, hoping with all his mind that it wouldn't be his turn.

Light streamed inside the dark room. A whitecoat stepped inside, a clipboard in one hand. He walked around the room, looking into the crates, noting the livestock. He passed right through subject 152C-F4's crate without a second glance, and the subject let out a sigh in relief. Not my day yet, he thought.

The whitecoat stopped at the crate right next to him. He reached into his key pocket and pulled out a key, then opened the lock on the crate and threw the door open. He reached his hand inside.

A girl was inside that crate. She had horrible patches of scale, crimson eyes, and always chattered aimlessly from day to day. 152C-F4 was always annoyed by her. But now, seeing her shrieking, trying to coil away from the whitecoat's touch made him feel sorry for her. She probably wouldn't come back.

"No!" she screamed, tears streaming down her face as the whitecoat grabbed her arm and pulled her out of her crate. "NO! NO!" The girl landed a kick at the whitecoat's face, but he managed to keep his hand tightened around her arm. The others watched, fascinated with the struggle, some of them horrified. Any hope for that girl to survive was gone.

"Silence, you animal!" the whitecoat snapped, dragging her out of the room and slammed the door with an echoing _boom_. The residents inside the prison winced as they heard the girl's screams as she was dragged further and further away from them, until her voice was gone.

F4 shuddered. What an Abyss this place is. He unfolded his grey wings, but they didn't have enough space to be fully opened. The crate limited their process. Sighing, he pulled it back in, covering himself with his wings. He had never had the chance to use them.

Like he ever would.

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That's the prologue. Read and review, please!


	2. Chapter 1

_A compliment from a flamer is as good as a mountain of gold. Thanks for reviewing, Emmafer :)_

_This is an explanation chapter. It would be the plot for the whole story. I think I'll have to change the story's name, because the one I did last night was when I was dead tired. It wasn't very good. _

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**Chapter 1**

Dr. Edwin Spark glared at the pancake before him. If looks could explode things, the pancake would have gone to dust by now. Everything he had tried to do in the past ten years had been failures – human experiments, creating super mutants, finding out a block for cancer. Everything had gone to dust. He could do nothing. He is useless. Or so the other scientists said.

_Let them think that,_ Edwin thought bitterly, or Dr. Spark as he had always preferred. Even his mother couldn't call him by his first name. _One day, I'll come back with the greatest invention of all. _

But of course, the "greatest invention of all" had already been created. It was Maximum Ride and her mutant bird kids, by Jeb Batchelder and some Dr. Martinez. They had been the greatest man-made mutants ever to walk the Earth. They had brought the downfall of Itex.

That was over forty years ago. Maximum and her "flock" had died already, due to their expiration dates. Jeb and his dear friend Martinez had followed suit, but the world still remembered their names. They were real, recorded legends. Dr. Spark yearned to have that kind of respect, but as far as he had seen, he was better off cleaning the test subjects' crates.

"Hey, Spark," someone tapped Dr. Spark's shoulder. He turned and shoved the hand violently away. Spark had always hated people touching him. It was not like anybody _wants_ to. With messy brown hair that looked like a vulture's nest 24/7 and mud brown eyes, plus the eternal frown and the sharp, foxy face (not to mention the big glasses that magnified his eyes), Dr. Spark was the most disliked in the company.

Ah, of course, Itex did not die. It had found a way to survive. A small branch of it remained alive while all the others were killed, and a small branch was all it takes to make several other thousands to be created. Now, Itex was what it previously was, but just under a different name. Xetic.

Spark saw the man he had always idolized: Dr. Shuichi Tsukimo, a genius Japanese scientist, specialized in genetic experiments, standing there with a cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Dr. Tsukimo raised a thin eyebrow. Spark immediately regretted his action. He quickly stood up.

"Sorry, sir," he said. "I wasn't thinking."

"When are you not thinking?" Dr. Tsukimo chuckled good-naturedly. He took a seat next to Spark. The young scientist suddenly felt his heart beating faster than before. What is this? An invitation for a job? Spark took a deep breath. He had to look calm and composed. He sat down next to his idol.

The Japanese scientist took a leisure sip from his coffee cup, savored the taste, and then turned to his clipboard. "Dr. Spark," Tsukimo began, running a thin finger on the paper on the board. "I've read your file. You have failed constantly, am I right?"

Spark felt a lump in his throat. Still, he had no other way but to reply honestly. "Yes, sir," he said in a tiny voice.

Tsukimo nodded, tapping the paper. "Mm. Your experiments themselves are not unbelievable, but the way you are doing it, the variables and the subjects are not right." He turned to look at Spark directly. "I could offer you a job that fits you. What do you say?"

This nearly took Spark's breath away. His dreams had come true. He was being asked to work with his idol. If he completes this job, he would be the start of Itex the New and Improved. Who could resist such thing?  
"What kind of job is it?" Spark asked. Tsukimo looked around at their crowded surrounding and replied in a whisper.

"Meet me in Lab 229 ten minutes after this." Then he stood and walked out of the door, leaving Spark sitting their, his muddy eyes suddenly shone like two shiny very brown ambers.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Spark did as he was told. When the clock struck eight ten, he was already inside Lab 229, waiting. It had only been five minutes, but Spark came anyway. He could hardly contain his excitement.

Exactly five minutes later, Tsukimo stepped in. Behind him, an Eraser pushed in a cart with a mutant crate on it. The thing inside was a girl with dark, curly hair and instead of nails, she had talons. Her feet were shaped like claws.

"This," Tsukimo said proudly, tapping at the roof of the cage, "is my father's greatest achievement. Meet 98-M2, the first harpy ever to be created and live. She took a darn long time to incubate and finish, but hey, no pain no gain, eh?"

The harpy lunged out at Tsukimo, hissing. Spark noted that there were feathers attached to her arms, from the wrist to the area under her arms. They were wings.

"Can she fly?" he asked, curious. If every scientist have a common thing, that is curiosity. The thirst for knowledge.

"Uh, well, not really," Tsukimo replied thoughtfully, kneeling to meet the harpy's eyes. They were flaming orange, wild, hateful, and dangerous. "She could go to ten thousand feet up into the air, but that's it. Couldn't go any higher. This is no Maximum Ride."

Everybody was using that phrase. "That is worthy of Maximum Ride" was a very high compliment given from one whitecoat to the other. Of course, few had gotten it, but not never.

"Then what does she have to do with the project we're about to do?" Spark inquired.

Tsukimo nodded at the Eraser, and he opened the crate's door. At the moment it sprang open, the harpy jumped out, lunging for Tsukimo. She was lightning fast, but the Eraser was much faster. He threw out his hand and caught the harpy by the throat and squeezed until she grew limp. Spark was impressed at the harpy's speed, but he didn't give care about the Eraser's method of keeping her in check.

The Eraser walked over to one of the operation tables in the room and slammed the harpy down on it, strapping her arms, feet, waist and neck onto it, then stepped out of the room.

Dr. Tsukimo motioned for Spark to come over, who obeyed. Tsukimo took a rod from a small stand nearby and dug it into the harpy's arm. She buckled for a moment, but then went limp again. Tsukimo removed the rod. He turned toward a machine and stuck the rod into one of the circular holes on its side. The screen above immediately light up, and codes started running through it.

"98-M2 retrieved successfully," a dull female voice said from it. A large board made of many jigsaw pieces appeared on the screen. A new piece appeared and put itself into the puzzle. Only one piece left to go. "Last piece is 152-F4, one of the avian mutant products. Last record showed its place was at the Institute of Peace, located in Colorado."

Spark's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He turned to look at his accomplice with puzzlement written all over his face. "Can I have a proper explanation for this?" he asked.

"Sure," Tsukimo nodded. "Forty years ago, when Itex fell, the last president left a program containing all the files we've lost on creating Flyboys and mechanical things. He couldn't leave it out in the open, of course, because you know how those blasted FBI agents were. We were able to retrieve the puzzle very recently." He motioned at the screen. "The keys were contained in mutants' bloods. The baby embryos left over from the last Itex generation. They were scattered among our new labs and turned into test subjects."

"But what if the branches already went through with the subject?" Spark asked. "It was a very big possibility."

Tsukimo nodded. "That's right. Still, we've been lucky enough that none of the twenty scattered puzzle pieces had been eliminated. All of them were in our reaches. The last one was in Colorado, as you have heard. I'll send a man to Institute of Peace to oversee the transportation."

Spark nodded. "And that's me, right?"

"Yep," Tsukimo smiled sympathetically at the younger scientist. "I'm sorry you didn't get to do a real science job, Dr. Spark, but this is important. We need that mutant. Then we would gain back all the knowledge we'd lost about Flyboys, mechanical nightmares and all those good stuff. You'll be a hero. Everyone will respect you."

Dr. Spark didn't say anything. He simply nodded. It _was_ a disappointment, but at least he would get out of range of the sneers and insults of his fellow scientists for awhile.

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_Now, don't give me lectures about not putting the flock into this story. If I put them in here, then it would have to involve some of the lovey dovey stuff that I am so NOT into. I hate pairing. Pure adventure or mystery, please. No cheesy love. _

_Read and review!_


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